Gallery

Gallery presents examples of work carried out over recent years, highlighting the capabilities of IDL® programming,
and the skills and experience of a retired meteorologist who has worked in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for over 30 years.
From weather forecasting, IT support in research and operations to software development for domestic and international projects,
he has developed skills in the analysis and visualisation of meteorological data,
the accessibility of the Bureau's data and products into clients Geographic Information System (GIS), and the mapping of weather information.

Exploring Radar

Radar Visualiser

Radar Visualiser (version 1.2 November 2015) is an interactive desktop mapping application used to create high-quality map and data images
utilising either background maps obtained via Web Map Services (e.g. using Google Static Maps API or OpenStreetMap staticMapLite API),
or created from GSHHG global coastline, Australian coastline/political border, forecast districts, metropolitan and other forecast areas, and location names datasets; overlayed with information from the Bureau of Meteorology radar network, including polar and volumetric radar datasets.
Radar Visualiser is easy to use and can be extended to include additional functionality and data sets.
The GUI-based application is written entirely in IDL® and utilises the freely available IDL Virtual Machine.
More...

Storm Climatology

The storm climatology image for Melbourne was produced from an analysis of 6-minute radar images created from historical Bureau of Meteorology polar radar data sets over the period 2008-2013 (excluding some noisy data days).
Using David Fanning's Blob Analyzer (www.idlcoyote.com),
storms were identified with a threshold radar level (i.e. 10) and perimeter area (i.e. 50 pixels) in radar images of approximately 150 km range (about 500 meters/pixel).

The storm climatology has been displayed on a basic map background using the Google (Mercator) map projection with centre longitude=144.7554, centre latitude=-37.8553, zoom level=8, map scale=1, width=640 and height=640;
overlayed with coastline, location names, crosshair and 50, 100 and 150 km range rings. The areas of higher frequency of storms are indicated by the yellow-red-black colors.

NWP Visualisation

Meteogram

Meteogram (version 1.0 September 2015) is an application used to generate forecast (graph and/or table) meteograms
(time series of pressure, temperature, humidity, rainfall, cloud, wind, etc) for specific locations from local netCDF grid files of data downloaded (using the NWP application)
from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global operational Forecast System (GFS) high resolution (0.25 degree) data available at
http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/ and the Bureau of Meteorology's (Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator)
ACCESS NWP Data.
The Meteogram application is written entirely in IDL® and can also generate image files automatically.

NWP

NWP (version 1.0 November 2015) is an application used to download NWP model output and generate map images from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)
Global operational Forecast System (GFS) high resolution (0.25 degree) data available at
http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/ and the Bureau of Meteorology's (Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator)
ACCESS NWP Data.
GFS/ACCESS model data are downloaded directly (into memory) using IDL® and OpenDAP.
This is more efficient than downloading the data using wget, and writing ASCII data to disk, as is done in the VOGON application.
The NWP application is written entirely in IDL® and can also generate local netCDF grid files of the downloaded data, and image files automatically. More...

VOGON

VOGON (version 1.0 July 2013) is an interactive desktop application for the analysis and visualisation of the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)
Global operational Forecast System (GFS) high resolution (0.5 degree) data available at
http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/, and
the Bureau of Meteorology's (Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator)
ACCESS NWP Data (downloaded using wget and OpenDAP).
Images are also able to be generated automatically in batch mode. The VOGON application is written entirely in IDL®
and is an extension of GFS Visualiser (e.g. addition of ACCESS data). More...

GFS Visualiser (version 1.2 December 2010) is a significant upgrade to Grid Visualiser
(e.g. use of Tab Widgets in the GUI and generation of meteograms). More...
Grid Visualiser (version 1.5 November 2008) is written entirely in IDL®.
An earlier version of Grid Visualiser (Astronomy) was used in the generation of images on
SkippySky Astro-Weather Forecast.
More...

Background Maps

Mapper

Mapper (version 1.0 April 2014) is an interactive desktop mapping application used to create high-quality map and data images
utilising either background maps obtained via Web Map Services (e.g. using Google Static Maps API or OpenStreetMap staticMapLite API),
or created from coastline, political border and location spatial data sets;
overlayed with information from weather station dictionary, radar network and lightning data sets.
Mapper is an easy to use application, written entirely in IDL®. The application can easily be extended to include additional functionality and data sets.
More...

Map Background

Map Background (version 6.6 April 2013) is an interactive desktop application used to create background images for the web (i.e. static web maps)
utilising coastline (e.g. IDL, GSHHS or GA), elevation (e.g. GTOPO30 or GADEM9S) and location spatial data sets.
Features include simple updating of the map backgrounds with interactive placement of location name labels,
and automatic generation of hotlinks for clickable maps. Map Background is an easy to learn application, written entirely in IDL®,
and has been used to create and maintain the Bureau of Meteorology
Radar Images map backgrounds and layers. More...

Climate Mapping

Climate Classification

Climate Classification is an update of the Bureau of Meteorology's
Climate Zones
using the latest (January 2015) Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) monthly rainfall,
and maximum and minimum temperature analyses, downloaded from the Bureau's online archive.
Averages (e.g. 10-year, 20-year, 30-year) are generated from the monthly AWAP data, and climate classification data sets and images,
based on the Bureau's modified Koppen classification,
are created from the past climate. More...

Climate Average

Climate Average is an update of the Bureau of Meteorology's Maps - average conditions
using the latest Australian Water Availability Project
(AWAP) monthly rainfall, and maximum and minimum temperature analyses,
downloaded from the Bureau's online archive.
Averages (e.g. over the 30-year period, 1981-2010) are generated from the monthly AWAP data,
and average data sets and images are created from the past climate. More...

Synoptic Typing

STYPER

STYPER is an application to generate fog probability guidance from the synoptic typing of National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)
Global operational Forecast System (GFS) high resolution (0.5 degree) data available at
http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/, and
the Bureau of Meteorology's (Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator)
ACCESS NWP Data (downloaded using wget and OpenDAP).
STYPER is written entirely in IDL® and can also generate CSV and HTML data files automatically.

Synoptic Typer Tools

Synoptic Typer Tools, an international synoptic typing system, is an extension of Synoptic Typer
and uses Principal Component and K-means Cluster Analysis to classify MSLP and geopotential height data
from the NCEP/NCAR and ERA-Interim Reanalysis data sets.

Synoptic Typer

Synoptic Typer is an interactive desktop application designed to perform automated objective synoptic typing using a pattern recognition scheme.
A history of grid point analyses is used to develop the synoptic types. Synoptic Typer is written entirely in IDL®.